


Stars in a Bottle

by NotQuiteInsane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Darkness, Fights, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, fight rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:45:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/pseuds/NotQuiteInsane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I had a request for a continuity and this just sorta came out?</p><p>Again, unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There's a darkness inside him. He can feel it creeping and seeping and burrowing its way into his innermost thoughts. Even as a bottle is lifted to open lips, a voice whispers like poisoned silk in his ear. Drown your problems, the voice says. Drown them or get it over with and drown yourself. The water is right there. Do it. Step forward and let it be over.

The starlight sparkles in its reflection off of the glassy lake. It's too much. It's too much to think that there should be light in such a dark place. Why can space be so big and so black and yet still have those little pinpricks of light in it? How is it fair? How is it right?

He screams and throws the empty whiskey bottle out as far as he can and hears it break the surface like a slap to the face. The ripples work their way closer, distorting the gleaming stars and causing them to wink in and out of existence.

Why can't he be like that? Why can the stars do that and he's not allowed to?

He wants to disappear and only come back when the ripples have gone, when every problem has been fixed by the natural order of things. Gravity and physics and pretty little molecular formulas should rule the universe, not these little instances that leave him wanting to gasp for oxygen that just won't reach his lungs. There is nothing that should be able to keep him from just forgetting like the oceans forget the fish and creatures inside of them. He should be able to transcend, to wipe clean, just like the surface of this lake.

Jump, the little voice says. Jump and those little splashes that you make will leave in time. There won't be anything left of your problems. Go ahead. Do it.

DO IT.

WHY DON'T YOU JUST DO IT?

Sam screams out at the voice and picks up a discarded half-empty bottle of tequila and throws back, feeling it burn like acid down his throat. It should numb him, shouldn't it? If it's acid, shouldn't it wipe out all those pesky little nerves and leave him to be nothing in the dark?

Do it, whispers the little voice again, and Sam takes a drink. After a few more, the numbness really starts to set in. He can't feel the alcohol sliding down his throat anymore, can't feel the clear liquid sloshing down his chin.

He looks down at the water from his place on the pier, staring at the dark mirror, gazing at what little of his reflection he can manage to make out. He swears he can see it smirking at him. Light. The light that's supposed to be oh so good is reflecting this menace, the menace that is Sam Winchester.

He wants it to be over. He wants to not be him.

But he keeps looking. He keeps staring at that glassy water and into the dark eyes that are his but so very different. Looking in any other mirror would show him what he always saw, brown hair, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. This mirror was showing him what he really was. Sick. Dark. Tired. Just... tired.

The muscles in his face flare as he clenches his jaw (why isn't he numb yet? Why can he still feel his body) and he takes another swig from the bottle, emptying it. His reflection does the same and a toothy grin spreads across its face.

Stop it, he thinks. Stop looking at me like that. Just STOP.

He throws the bottle and it breaks the surface, ridding him of the inner mirror. But now that it's gone, who is he? What's left of him?

He falls to his knees and looks at the dark planks of the boardwalk, their whorls and grain so strangely defined in this non-light. The moon is dark, only a blank spot in the sky and his attention is drawn upwards again. The stars. The bright little pinpricks of far off galaxies and worlds that he'll never see stare down at him, judging his actions and deciding his fate. They want him to fall. They want him to fall like they will, millions of years from now (or maybe it already happened for them, just too far off to tell), but there's something they don't know. The joke is on them. Sam fell long ago, bursting into a steadily collapsing mass of gravity and darkness, sucking in everything and spitting nothing back out. The stars don't already know that he's dead inside, just like the blackest parts of space with no light nor heat to let anything stay alive.

He died a long time ago, back when women in white were the biggest concerns in his mind. He died when a fire lit so brightly and hotly that it seared him to the core. He's been dead inside for too long to tell; the decay just hasn't reached the surface yet, but it's there. People catch it in little glimpses of anger, when he just can't hold back the death in his heart any longer. There isn't any chance of recovery. After all, nothing can bring back the dead, not without a dire consequence. He's sick of paying the price. He just wants to let go.

What about Dean? The little voice in his head is back, giving him whiplash with its advice. He wants to break its neck.

What ABOUT Dean? Dean doesn't know. Dean can't know. Because if Dean ever finds out, there's about a snowball's chance in Hell that Sam will ever figure out what he should do on his own. There will always be that guilt trip, the "Dad told me to take care of you, Sammy". He can't handle that. Not after all these years. Not after the blackness in his heart has almost reached the surface.

There's no point in denying it. He's rotten all the way through. He's surprised it hasn't started to show on his skin yet. There aren't little bruised patches of skin, cuts and scrapes that he doesn't remember getting. There's just skin. Nothing more, nothing less. It's a farce. He knows it. There has to be something there.

Doesn't there?

He yells again and hears the echo over the water.

He almost thinks he hears someone yell back, but when he looks down he just sees himself, again, grinning like a predator in the dark. Some sort of psychotic Narcissus leaning over a lake to get a better view. His Echo just an echo. This Narcissus wasn't even complete! He didn't get to be right. He can't even get the rest of the myth right. A perfect example, but for the fact that he destroys every pre-conceived notion of correct, of right, before he can even try.

Want to screw it up more? the little voice asks. You know that Narcissus turned into the flower. Why don't you break that trope? Fall into your reflection like he wanted to do. Just fall. Break. You're already broken. It shouldn't take much to crush yourself to dust.

Sam starts to lean, starts to go forward, but a hand catches his shoulder.

"Sammy! What are you doing? Jesus Christ, you were about to fall!" The hand pulls him up and away and Sam can't stop thinking the same thing, over and over again as Dean pulls him into the waiting Impala.

Just this once, why couldn't you have been too late to save me?


	2. Blood on the Concrete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a request for a continuity and this just sorta came out?
> 
> Again, unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own.

               Numb.

               Sometimes he thinks it's better not to feel at all, which is why he lets it get this bad. It's just one hunt after another, saving people, the family—whatever. He doesn't have the energy to care anymore.

               He only has the energy to keep killing.

               Every demon dead, every ghost vanquished, every vampire beheaded, and another part of him dies. Half of _him_ is extinguished every time he feels the rush of power from killing something. And every time, that half gets smaller and smaller, though he sincerely doubts there will be a time when all of him is as dead as the corpse they’re salting and burning.

               Dean has started watching him more closely after the incident at the lake, after he’d been through so much alcohol that they’d ended up in a hospital to get him detoxed. The doctor had said it was a miracle he’d managed to drink that much without passing out.

               Sam blames the alcoholism in the family.

               But even with Dean watching him so closely, Sam manages to find his own time to curl up and die. Stopping in Albuquerque after an exorcism, Dean had passed out on the bed after only a few minutes in the motel room. It had been easy to slip out of the room, close the door behind him and look for the darkest part of the city to sit down in and wait.

               He’s still angry that nobody dares an attempt at mugging a six foot four inch giant in flannel. He would have sat and taken it, taken whatever beating they tried to dole out.

               That’s when he got the idea, though. If people wouldn’t take the fight to him, he’d take the fight to the people.

               He can find fighting rings in most big cities they visit. It was slow going at first, nobody trusting him enough to say where the fights are going. Nobody would even meet his eye until he asked after a showdown with a particularly nasty revenant that had left him with a nasty bruise across one cheek. After asking around, a heavy set man with a heavy accent had given him a card, saying to be at that place the next night at 1am sharp.

               He’d made excuses to Dean, saying there was another hunt. It hadn’t been difficult to find a suitable case for him to pursue on his own whilst Dean found some pretty person to shack up with for a few days.

               When he got to the fights that night, he’d been dazzled by the reverberation of sound in the concrete basement. Heavy music bounced off the walls (nothing like the rock he was forced to listen to nearly every day) and shouts came from intoxicated persons crowded around a fenced off arena where two people, bloodied and bruised, fought for a small sum.

               He’d put his name on the roster and showed himself around enough to get the betting folk interested. Men and women alike leered at him from behind dirty facades, certain that a pretty-boy like him was just in it for the glory, that he didn’t have the guts to take down his opponent.

               That had been the first fight. They didn’t doubt him after that.

               And each night, in each new city, he found another ring. There were entire circuits for underground fight rings, he discovered. And working his way up the ranks wasn’t difficult. He only had to make sure that they didn’t mark his face. It was the only place Dean would notice.

               He’s starts to pass off some of his fighting injuries as coming from hunts. He lets demons push him around a little more than necessary, waits for a shapeshifter to throw him across the room before going in with the silver knife. But after every hunt, all he can picture is his own blood dashed across the concrete floor of another fight ring.

               He places second in a weekend long fight in Cincinnati. He always puts the name “The Boy King” on the rosters after that first night back in... wherever it had been. God knows what the spectators think it means, but they cheer him on nonetheless.

               Third place is his in Detroit after a Kitsune hunt.

               He wrangles a first, but only by a hair, in Anaheim.

               And through it all, he’s numb.

               Every time he hears a bone break from his fists pummeling another person to the floor, he doesn’t feel anything. There’s no nausea at the idea of hurting another human being, there’s no disgust, only the numb empty feeling that he’s had since he woke up in the hospital after the lake.

               He knocks a man unconscious in Seattle and all he can think as he continues to kick the limp body in the ribs and the bounces pull him off, is that there was no point in stopping. Who would he stop for?

               Dean starts to notice Sam coming back to the motels later and later, but he doesn’t say anything, just thinks by the swagger of his younger brother that there’s a girl or two out there that is susceptible to the puppy dog eyes of Sam Winchester.

               In a few months, The Boy King is known across the states as a fearsome fighter, vicious, ruthless, and more than willing to fight for any title.

               Someone recognizes him in Jacksonville, Florida after his win in Miami. He shrugs them off and explains away the questions from Dean.

               Chicago is dark when they arrive and Sam wastes no time in hitting the streets. Dean thinks he’s off to find a monster in action and doesn’t question it when Sam doesn’t even take his gun with him. He’s proven himself more than capable of taking out most critters. He does take his cell phone with him, so that his brother won’t worry too much.

               Over the 24 hour sounds of traffic in the Windy City, Sam can hear his footsteps echoing from building to building. A few homeless people watch him pass, but shrink back from him as they see the look in his eye. They huddle back into their corners and whisper to each other about the giant with dead eyes. They mutter to each other that they wouldn’t cross him, even for a chance at a warm bed out of the chill November air.

               The Boy King walks on, passing into one of the rougher parts of town and staring down anyone who thinks to get in his way this late at night. Finally he finds the marking over a doorway that means he’s come to the right place. He knocks and brown eyes in a tanned face widen as they recognize him. He’s let in without a word and led down the stairs of the house to the basement where a match is already in progress. The crowd is as loud as always, but something catches Sam’s eye. It wouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone not brought up in the life, but it was only too obvious to him.

               It was a flash of teeth in one corner.

               A feeling of animal brutality stemming from a bulky man in the middle of the crowd.

               More bloodlust than usual.

               Full black eyes for just a flash of a moment.

               Here be monsters.

               He finds he doesn’t care.

               He’s numb. And that’s all he cares about.

               They put him against a vampire in the first round and he takes a nasty hit across the face in the start, causing a roar of disapproval from the crowd. But he stands back up and grins, blood smeared crimson across the white of his teeth and gives as good as he got. At some point he notices a fang go flying, but he’s too busy breaking his opponent’s elbow to notice where it skittered off to.

               He spits after the creature as it lurches away from the ring, saliva a dull pink on the grey concrete before turning brown with the congealed blood of previous matches.

               It’s a little bit disappointing when his next opponent (supposedly a champion downstate) is out within only a few minutes. They give him a short reprieve in one of the back rooms.

               He paces restlessly, blood pounding in his temples, teeth gritted against the thoughts rocketing around in his head for the first time in the months since he started fighting.

               It was a remembrance.

               He remembers the night at the lake and remembers the lengths to which he’d gone to become numb. He remembers the voices that he’d heard that night and he hears them again.

               WORTHLESS

               SCUM

               BOY WITH DEMON BLOOD

               why _shouldn’t_ you lose the next match? go on, throw it. see what happens.

               SHUT UP.

               He shakes his head and throws a punch into the air, knowing it won’t connect with the voices that are cutting through the numbness. A knock comes at the door and he tells them to fuck off. The person leaves and Sam paces more rapidly around the room. Shivering and shaking his head as if trying to throw off some corrupting influence. He screws his eyes shut and clamps his hands over his ears, making an effort to shut out _those voices_. But they keep whispering.

                         Dean would be so disappointed.

                                                                                                         Why are you here, little boy? Go home.

                                                                                                                                                                       What are you trying to prove? You’re nothing. You’ll never be anything.

                         That next punch will give you what you deserve.

                                                                                                                                           Your time is up, little Winchester.

               He slams his fist into his thigh, then scratches himself down the length of his back, hoping the sensation will bring him back to himself. It doesn’t work. He isn’t numb.

               He opens the door and stumbles back out to the ring. He needs to do this, needs to finish his final round.

               But when he opens his eyes and sees his opponent, reigning champ of the south side of Chicago, he freezes. He sees black eyes. He hears the low chuckle of a demon.

               “How far the youngest Winchester has fallen,” it hisses as it throws a knee into his stomach.

               Sam gets in a jab to its face and hears the resulting crunch of cartilage.

               “Does big brother know you’re a fight whore? Does he even notice when you come home bloody?”

               Sam wonders distantly as he kicks out the demon’s right knee why it isn’t using any of its powers and looks up in the brief seconds he gains while the demon tries to heal. There’s a devil’s trap inscribed above them on the ceiling. Someone had been ready for this fight.

               The next blow to the back of his knee catches him unaware and he falls to a knee, gritting his teeth as pain sears up his leg.

               He’s not numb anymore, he’s almost forgotten.

               One blow to the top of his head and there’s just blackness.

               He wakes up on a dirty, stained mattress a few hours later, his phone buzzing on the table next to him. Someone must have put it there while he was out. He wondered who.

               “Sammy! It’s almost nine, and I have no idea where you are. What’s going on?”

               Sam looks around the room, grey concrete, a dark wooden door, slightly cracked, and not much else. He notices the numbness is back.

               He almost smiles at that.

               “I’ll be back soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling angsty. I blame reasons. Unbeta'd. Just sorta spat it out.


End file.
